


no pomegranate seeds for us (just peaches and plums)

by ravenreyamidala



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Eliot having emotions, Fix-it fic, M/M, brief allusion to past suicide ideation, lack of self-care, mentions of disordered eating, probably the title of this coupled with the previous tag is inherently spoilerly, spoilers for the season four finale, that starts with angst, there will be a happy ending eventually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-15 18:46:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18504889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenreyamidala/pseuds/ravenreyamidala
Summary: After he's freed from the monster, Eliot doesn't laugh at how awful the timing is.





	1. learning life isn't okay

**Author's Note:**

> So I had some thoughts after the season finale. 
> 
> obligatory all caps warning here if you haven't watched it yet: SPOILERS FOR THE SEASON FINALE OF THE FOURTH SEASON. 
> 
>  
> 
> SPOILERS
> 
>  
> 
> SPOILERS
> 
> will i remember to edit this out after the next season premiere? probably not.

It feels like a fucking joke. Eliot knows why Quentin laughed, now, when they heard of Penny’s death. Eliot nearly does so, before the hitch of his breath before the laugh starts has him clutching his abdomen. 

Margo is there, god, at least he has Bambi, at least he has a friend in all of this. He looks at the group of them, linked by the one person who’s not here, and doesn’t make eye contact with Alice, who doesn’t even have someone like Margo.

He almost forgets about the peach in his pocket; it’s light compared to everything else. He shivers, despite the fire: it’s probably blood loss. That’s what he tells himself. 

Except he said that he wants to be braver, doesn’t he? He owes it to Q. 

Being a prisoner in his own mind is nothing compared to this. He’s surprised to realize he’s not as cynical as he always pretends to be, even after all the time he had to contemplate himself; he thought that there would be a happier ending. Worst-case scenario, he would die, but even that would have been preferable to this. 

But he can’t think like that anymore, not after everything. He has so much time now, and he can do so much, and when he does magic now, it’s the easiest it’s ever been. 

It’s everything else that’s much harder now. 

 


	2. waving through a window

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's time to make a plan. Or to think about making one?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the next chapter! i can't promise any sort of consistency in posting for a variety of reasons, but here you go!

“So what’s our plan?” Margo asks, a week later at breakfast, when they’ve all actually managed to drag themselves out of bed to eat approximately at the same time. 

Margo looks the most composed out of all of them, as always, makeup already on, hair done, dressed for the day, taking the final bite of her avocado toast. Kady’s standing behind her, waiting for her bagel to toast, similarly put together. Penny 23 and Julia aren’t dressed but they’re nearly done with their omelettes. Alice looks like how Eliot feels, bags under her eyes, hair greasy, still in her pajamas that he doesn’t think she’s changed out of in a week. She’s nursing a cup of coffee, black, taking a sip approximately every two minutes. Not that Eliot’s judging. He can’t even have coffee because of his still healing wound, and everything he’s eaten since regaining control of his tastebuds always has the strangest aftertaste of plums. It does not endear him to eating, but after he nearly passed out from hunger and saw Margo’s expression after, he’s been eating. 

Eating may be hard, but at least he can manage to get out of his pajamas. He knows how Alice feels, but if he stops doing that, he’ll stop doing anything, and at the very least, he has to go to physical therapy and try to be okay for Margo. There’s no one Alice has to be okay for. 

Margo clears her throat. He’s missed part of the conversation again. He’s still relearning how this body works after being cut off from it for so long. He forgets to listen sometime, not used to having more than his thoughts and Charlton to pay attention to. 

“Plan for what?” he asks, before realizing the conversation has already moved past that. 

“Plan to get Quentin back, dick-for-ears,” Margo says immediately, before drawing her eyebrows down sheepishly. Eliot gives her a quick smile, letting her know it’s okay. He would rather have her snarking than her walking on eggshells around him. If she’s nice to him, he’ll start crying and won’t ever stop. 

There’s not even a body to bury. Or to cremate. Eliot thinks Q might have liked the thing where his ashes become a tree but Eliot never asked and now he’ll never know. 

“There’s not even a body,” Eliot points out, and he wonders how he, of all people, ends up playing Devil’s Advocate. 

“So what? We have magic,” Kady puts in, sitting down at the table. 

“So what, we’re going to grow a body?” Julia asks. “That’s something we can do, right?” 

“Not what I was thinking, necessarily, I was thinking more along the lines of a golem,” Margo says. 

“That wouldn’t work,” Eliot says. “The magic requires a tether to a physical body.” 

“Yeah, he’s right,” Kady says. “I looked into golems when Penny— our Penny died.” 

“What if we got a Quentin from a different timeline?” Julia proposes, carefully looking away from Penny 23. 

“A Quentin from a different timeline would still be alive,” Eliot points out. “Even if he volunteered, I wouldn’t let him...die for ours.” 

“What about a Quentin’s who’s dead? We just need a body, right?” Margo asks. 

“That’s not going to work,” Penny 23 says immediately. 

They all stop talking and stare at him for a moment. 

“How do you know that?” Julia asks finally. 

Penny 23 shudders. “Just. Trust me on this.” 

Julia nods, and they fall silent again. 

“Penny’s right, that won’t work,” Alice finally says and they look at her. She hunches in on herself even more. “But— we can grow a body, with magic. It was something I heard about when I was a niffin.” 

“Let’s say we do get a body,” Eliot says. “How do we get Q back? It’s not like when Alice was a niffin, and we can’t do the same thing, right?” 

“No, that wouldn’t work for someone’s who dead,” Alice agrees, taking a sip of her coffee. “We’d need his Shade too, and the only reason we were able to retrieve mine was because Julia didn’t have hers.” 

“I don’t need my Shade,” Julia says slowly, putting a hand on Penny 23’s when he opens his mouth to protest. “I could-- let it go, again.” 

“How would we even disconnect your Shade?” Kady points out. “Do we go back to the sisters? We’d have to rob another bank to pay them.” 

“Well, technically, I still have access to Janet’s bank account,” Margo says thoughtfully. 

“And I got paid a lot as a DJ,” Penny 23 adds. 

“So that’s the money thing solved, then,” Julia says.

“To grow a body, we’re going to need DNA,” Alice says abruptly. 

“Oh, so we’re going back to that part of the plan,” Eliot mutters to himself. 

“We can speed up the growing process by using a time chamber, but we have to start the process as soon as possible to ensure success,” Alice finishes, shrinking in on herself as soon as she stops talking. 

“We don’t have his body,” Penny 23 points out. Julia elbows him. Penny 23 at least has the grace to look sheepish. 

“We have his hairbrush,” Julia points out. 

And that’s how they ended up in Q’s bedroom in the Physical Cottage, searching for his hairbrush. 

“How the fuck does he find his hairbrush if it’s taking us over an hour to find it?” Margo exclaims, putting her hands on her hips and looking around the room as if her fairy eye will suddenly develop X-ray vision. 

“This is bullshit,” Penny 23 commiserates, plopping down onto the bed. 

Eliot groans in half frustration, half realization. 

“Guys, why didn’t we just check his pillow for stray hairs?” he wonders, picking up a piece of brown hair that can only be Q’s by the length and texture. 

Kady slowly backs out of the closet, holding a box of notes. 

“What’s that?” Julia asks, moving closer, reaching out to touch the box. 

Kady shakes her head immediately, and Julia takes her hand back. 

“Are those letters?” Alice asks, her head popping up behind the side of the bed, from where she had been searching under the bed. 

“They’re notes,” Penny 23 realizes, clearly reading Kady’s mind from the nasty look she shoots him. 

“Notes?” Eliot asks, but he knows already what they must say. 

“Like, for class? What’s the big deal?” Margo interjects. “Did he draw dicks in the margins? Write Quentin and Eliot for— sorry Eliot.” 

“Goodbye notes,” Alice says grimly. “I wonder when he wrote them.” 

Kady sets the box down gingerly on the desktop. They all stare at it like it’s going to explode any moment. It’s Margo who finally breaks the silence. 

“So, are we going to read them or what?” she says brashly, not waiting for an answer before she’s sitting down at the desk and rifling through the contents of the box. 

Margo’s handed everyone else except Alice their letter and is holding an envelope out to Eliot that’s addressed to him in the almost-calligraphy Q uses when he’s trying to write neatly, and suddenly Eliot has to get out of this room. 

“I can’t do this right now,” he says vaguely, before striding to the door. 

“Eliot!” Margo calls, and he looks back at her, and he knows that she can tell that he wants to be alone right now. And then he’s out the door and going down the stairs except he doesn’t know where else he can go, it’s been so long since he’s been anywhere but the Physical Cottage, and he realizes to his horror that he’s scared to go outside. 

He sits on the step and puts his face into his hands. He’ll just take a moment and then he’ll leave. Go...do something. He’s almost relieved when he hears footsteps at the top of the stairs. 

“Bambi, I--,” he starts, turning around. He stops when he catches sight of Alice shuffling down the stairs. She doesn’t smile at him, but just settles down onto the step next to him and doesn’t say anything and just sits with him. 

Neither of them talk, and if Alice notices Eliot crying, she doesn’t say anything. It’s just as well-- he doesn’t say anything about the drops falling on her hands. 

Margo finds him later at his desk in his room, and she drops the letter on his desk. He looks up at her, and she looks unamused. 

“You should read it, El,” she says. 

“Did you read yours?” he asks, already knowing the answer; she’s reapplied her makeup already, but Eliot knows she’s been crying. 

“He’s a really good writer,” she answers, sitting down on the edge of his bed. He doesn’t turn around to look at her, just looks at the curl of Q’s handwriting across the front of the envelope. 

“I’m not-- it’s not goodbye,” Eliot says. 

“It’s not goodbye,” Margo agrees immediately, voice as soft as it gets. “But he would have wanted you to read it.” 

“Yeah, if he weren’t coming back,” Eliot manages. “But-- we’re going to get him back, right?” 

“Oh sweetie,” Margo says, and for once it’s not patronizing. “Of course we are. He’d do the same for any of us.” 

Eliot nods, He takes the envelope and holds it over the trash can for a moment, before opening a drawer and sticking it in there. He finally spins his chair around to look at her. She smiles at him, and he smiles back. They’re going to do this. They’re going to bring Q back. 

“Now come on, you’ve been holed up here forever, let’s donate our wardrobes and buy new ones,” Margo cajoles, standing up and holding a hand out to him. 

He takes her hand and follows her. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you, like me, are still reeling after the finale, check out @thankq4thehope on twitter or @thankqforthehope on tumblr!

**Author's Note:**

> this wasn't very long at all but i wanted to write something and who am I to refuse the muse when inspiration strikes? please scream at me about the finale in the comments or contact me at my tumblr, ravenreyamidala, because i need to scream about it with someone.


End file.
